


Box in My Room

by airplanejam



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, F/M, Nathalie Sancoeur-centric, Pining, Unrequited Love, season 2 finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:54:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23961073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airplanejam/pseuds/airplanejam
Summary: Nathalie will do anything for Gabriel, and it's not a secret.
Relationships: Emilie Agreste/Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth, Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth/Nathalie Sancoeur
Kudos: 36





	Box in My Room

**Author's Note:**

> it's been a really long time since i've watched miraculous ladybug and nathalie is one of my favorite characters. i just watched the last episode of season 2 and i have so many feelings--
> 
> anyways, i did my best and wrote this from memory so please let me know if something is not accurate. this is only self-beta'd.

She’s too weak to walk. Gabriel had found her below the shelves when he returned, collapsed and trembling on the floor with someone else's Miraculous still clutched in her hand.

It had hurt like hell to use. Gabriel carries her up the stairs of the mansion and she is conscious enough to worry that he will keep going, turn the bend and continue up the next flight, set her down against the gray sheets on his bed, but—

He turns into the drawing room instead and settles her tenderly against the couch, almost as if he cares that she did it, that she would die for him. She knows that Gabriel is about debts and repayments, now. She knows this for what it is.

It hadn't mattered in that moment. Ladybug and her band of misfit sidekicks had had Hawk Moth cornered and they weren't going to hold back. He was going to lose everything he'd been building, everything that they had worked on together. She had seen him on the bad nights, after close calls and almost-victories. Ladybug and Chat Noir would saunter away with their hips swaying, believing they were heroes. Everyone tells them they are heroes. The mayor erects statues of them posing ridiculously in the middle of the city annually and tourists come by the thousands. Children bumble around carrying balloons painted with their faces. National television boasts about the great Ladybug and her Chat, legends and protectors of Paris, but Nathalie knows that heroes could never have done _this_ to him. They are not the ones that have to watch as Gabriel falls apart, as he locks himself downstairs and refuses to eat for days. They aren't the ones that miss his laugh like a limb, his smile like a vital organ. They are not the one who lose more and more of him each week. 

The thing is, she’d known him before, too. Known him from the very start, when he was bright and young and flirtatious. He must have dated half of the models in Paris, a new ten on his arm every week. He was tall and lean with high cheekbones, a cutting nose and the blondest hair she'd ever seen before. He had been beautiful. She had known the delight in his eyes that accompanied a new clothing line which every teenage girl would surely dream of at night. He used to care about things other than earrings and a ring. Whenever Nathalie would stop by Paris, he would insist that she was to come by the mansion and ask how her day was with genuine affection, twirl her about if he was in a good mood and find reasons to take her out to coffee. She'd known him when he almost tripped over himself in his excitement to tell her about an Emilie, and then suddenly, a baby he called Adrien.

Then Emilie died, and Adrien had needed someone to change his diapers and put him to bed at night and it was becoming alarmingly apparent that Gabriel wasn’t going to be the one to do it, so she did. She packed her things from her small apartment in London into neat boxes and moved back to Paris.

Gabriel offered her money for it, once. It was six months after she appointed herself as Adrien's caretaker, and it was a rare sight to even see Gabriel out of his room. He wouldn’t take no for answer — at least that much hadn’t changed — and Gabriel always got what he wanted. Nathalie figured he needed the validation, anyway. She became his secretary once Adrien was eight years old (“ _Old enough to handle himself,_ ” Gabriel had declared angrily to her, the better part of the way through a bottle of scotch) and nothing had changed.

“It’s damaged,” he says now, as if she didn't already know that. By all means, using the Miraculous should’ve killed her. “It was way too dangerous,” and she hates that something in still her warms at the concern in his voice. Twenty years and it's like nothing has changed.

“I had to save you,” she tells him between coughs. It’s no secret that Nathalie will do anything for Gabriel. She knows that he knows this. He looks at her sometimes, and she can't tell if it’s pity painting his face or something worse. He looks at her now, expression softening. He covers her hand with his own, and she closes her eyes. He hasn’t touched her like this in years.

The fabric of the sofa is soft against her cheek and wet from the saliva she is drooling. Nathalie wonders if she’s being manipulated. She wonders if he knows there’s no need for that, anymore. 


End file.
